The highly educated father of two told BBC Radio 4's
"Desert Island Discs" last Friday that he tends to go bed around
4am after he was asked to describe the most unusual thing about
himself.

Ad

"I generally sleep at about 4am in the morning," said Hassabis,
who sold his artificial
intelligence lab to Google in 2014 for £400 million. "I'll
get into work around 10am, do a full days work in the office,
come back for dinner, spend a bit of time with the family, and
then start a second day's work at 10pm/11pm, and go on to the
small hours of the morning."

So what kind of work does Hassabis get done in the early hours of
the morning? Expenses? Email admin? Nope, it's hardcore research
by the sounds of it.

"Usually, that's the time when I do my research," he said. "So
I'll be reading about the latest academic papers. I like doing
all of my creative thinking in the small hours of the morning. I
have a lot of habits like that that I've learned maximise the way
that I think."